Readers will have their own pantheon of classic Mahler Fives. My list is headed by Abbado and Bernstein. Yours may begin with Barbirolli or Barshai. And we haven't even arrived at C for Chailly. Sir Roger Norrington's answer to the profusion of rival recordings has been typically provocative. In Nos 1, 4 and now 5 he presents the music in a historically informed manner crucial to which is the strategic deployment of vibrato-less strings. Almost as distinctive are the puckish woodwind and lean-toned brass. Less welcome is his occasional impatience with the music, a dearth of old-world flexibility within the phrase, a certain brashness.

Take the famous Adagietto. Even if your ear adjusts to the consort-of-viols sonority, what Sir Roger calls “a clear, honest tone with the most wonderful possibilities for phrasing, coherence, and transparency”, the middle part of the movement may seem unduly harassed. Elsewhere the invention acquires uncommon translucency but loses any specifically Mitteleuropean inflection. The playing is the more impressive for having been captured live in vivid, close-up sound; enthusiastic applause is retained.

In his continuing cycle from San Francisco, Michael Tilson Thomas's response is more conventional. The Fifth again derives from concert performances though here applause has been eliminated. The pale lavender designer packaging is nothing if not opulent and the sound engineering more ambitious than Hänssler's, aiming to incorporate greater hall ambience in hybrid SACD format.

In direct comparison with Norrington, balances come across as string-heavy, though there is the slight feeling of constriction on high violin sound I remember from previous instalments. In fact, while no one collecting this series is likely to feel short-changed, I was disappointed that even under this vastly experienced Mahlerian there are passages which register as unnatural. The central Scherzo is characterised with the utmost flair, the horn playing as good as any on disc, but you may not always warm to the conductor's post-Bernstein manipulations in the first and second movements. More troubling is the reading of the Adagietto. In its over-emotive central section and portentous close, it lies at the opposite extreme from Norrington's yet equally lacks poise and flow. The finale goes much better, with all the requisite verve and lightness of touch. A curate's egg then but a classy one. MTT is self-evidently concerned to make of the music something more than a snapshot in historical time.